Wednesday, July 29, 2015

A source sent
a recording from an internal conference call held recently by the California Hospital Association about
its secret deal with SEIU-UHW.

The
two-minute recording (see below) highlights growing tensions inside SEIU-UHW
about whether Dave Regan’s deal with
the CHA is living up to his grandiose promises.

When Regan
inked the deal in May of 2014, he triumphantly described
it as a "breakthrough agreement" that would allow SEIU-UHW to
unionize as many as 60,000 hospital workers across California.

The agreement
allows SEIU-UHW to organize 30,000 hospital workers during “Phase 1” of the
deal (from May 2014 to December 2016).

In Phase 2 (December 2016 to December
2017), SEIU-UHW can ‘purchase’ the right to unionize an additional 30,000
hospital workers if the union can successfully convince California legislators
and GovernorJerry Brown to allocate an additional $6 billion a year of taxpayer
funds to California hospital corporations.

Regan famously secured
SEIU-UHW’s so-called "organizing rights deal" by forfeiting workers'
rights -- workers’ right to strike, workers’ right to report patient-careviolations to government oversight agencies, workers’ right to negotiate their
own wages and benefits, etc.

Regan also agreed to prohibit SEIU-UHW from taking any positions on legislative, regulatory, and ballot issues that are "adverse to the interests" of the hospital industry. In addition, Regan's deal essentially converts SEIU into a lobbying
arm for hospital corporations that's dedicated to boosting hospital profits.

Immediately
after signing his deal, Regan jetted to a meeting of SEIU's International Executive Board in Washington,
DC and boasted that the deal would literally "save" the labor movement. Days
later, Diamond Dave published an article trumpeting his backroom deal ("Live
Better Together") and also got journalist Josh Israel to pen a puff piece entitled "The
Audacious New Proposal to Save the Labor Movement."

So… now that 15
months have passed since Regan signed the deal, what's happened? Has SEIU-UHW successfully unionized tens of thousands
of hospital workers?

Not quite.

As of today,
Regan has unionized a grand total of zero
workers under the deal. That's right, the big goose egg.

Check out
the recording below.

During last
month’s conference call with California hospital executives, CEO Duane Dauner reported that so far SEIU-UHW
has attempted only two elections under the deal.

In February
2015, SEIU-UHW lost
(by a landslide) an election at 552-bed Mission Hospital (Mission Viejo, Calif.) covering approximately
1,000 workers.

In December
2014, SEIU-UHW narrowly won an election for fewer than 100 workers at 158-bed Verdugo Hills Hospital (Glendale,
Calif.). However, SEIU-UHW allegedly violated federal labor law by using threats
and "acts of physical intimidation" against workers during the
election, according to NLRB records.

Earlier this spring, a judge held a trial to
investigate SEIU-UHW's alleged violations, but has not yet issued a final
ruling. The allegations -- which were filed by the hospital despite its sweetheart deal with SEIU-UHW -- identify Cass Gualvez (an SEIU-UHW staffer and Executive Committee member) who apparently
headed the campaign at the Southern California hospital.

So... what does
a quick cost-benefit analysis say about Regan's "visionary" deal with
the CHA?

So far,
Regan has spent approximately $35 million of SEIU-UHW members' dues money on
the deal. In exchange, SEIU-UHW has unionized a total of zero workers.

Where did
the $35 million go?

First, Regan
flushed $10-$15 million down the toilet during two rounds of statewide ballot
initiatives, which SEIU-UHW never filed. Next, the CHA agreement requires SEIU-UHW
to deposit $20 million into a political fund jointly controlled by the CHA
that's used to lobby politicians for billions of additional taxpayer monies for
hospital corporations.

Even if you
accept Regan's horribly cynical "money-for-members" approach, the current results are nothing
less than an unmitigated failure.

It's no
wonder, then, that voices inside SEIU-UHW are saying, "$35 million of our monthly dues money for WHAT? Dave sold us a lemon!"

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Here's more
news about SEIU-UHW's secret deal with the California Hospital Association (CHA).

According to
a
complaint that NUHW recently
filed with California Attorney
General Kamala Harris, SEIU-UHW and hospital CEOs recently set up a corporate
entity to implement the terms of their secret partnership deal. The new corporation is responsible for enforcing the gag clauses
that reportedly block workers from reporting patient-care violations to local,
state, and federal agencies.

The corporation is governed by a board of directors that includes Regan
and hospital CEOs.

What to call the newly formed company responsible for gagging tens of thousands of hospital workers?

Well, Regan and
his pin-striped industry pals decided to borrow a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook by naming their new corporation "Caring for Californians."

In the
1980s, Reagan famously named a newly developed U.S. intercontinental ballistic
missile, which carries up to ten 300-kiloton nuclear warheads, "The Peacekeeper."

Here's a
letter printed on "Caring for Californians" letterhead. The company's
office is located in the same building as the California Hospital Association. Both
Reagan and the CHA's CEO Duane
Dauner signed the letter as the "Co-Chairs" of "Caring for
Californians."

The letter also notes that Greg
Adams (the President of Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Region)
is the "Treasurer" of "Caring for Californians." More
records are below.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Last week, several
of Kaiser Permanente’spatients and the "Courage Campaign," a grassroots organization
in California, held a press
conference where they slammed
Kaiser for systematically withholding critical mental health services from patients.

During the
past two years, state investigators have fined Kaiser millions of
dollars for committing "serious" and "systemic" violations
of state law by withholding care from thousands of mental health patients,
falsifying patients' appointment records, and violating mental health parity
laws. (Los Angeles Times, "California
Again Slams Kaiser for Delays in Mental Health Treatment," February 24,
2015)

Kaiser's
violations are also highlighted in class-action
lawsuits that link the violations to multiple suicides.

Last year,
Kaiser famously signed a
secret agreement with its largest union, SEIU-UHW, which bars the union and its members from reporting
patient-care violations to state regulators, according to a complaint NUHW filed with the California Attorney
General.

What could
possibly be causing Kaiser’s execs to turn their backs on patients with mental
illness, who are one of our society's most vulnerable populations?

Profits, of
course.

In addition…
a reader has sent along a photo that offers interesting clues about the elitist
corporate culture that permeates Kaiser's top echelon of fatcat execs.

Part of Kaiser's 17.8-acre administrative office park in Pleasanton, Calif.

The photo
comes from Kaiser's administrative offices in Pleasanton, Calif., a 17.8-acre suburban
campus that the HMO purchased from computer giant Oracle Corp. in 2008 for upwards of $100 million. It's a sterile,
glass-enclosed, tree-lined, corporate theme park that would make most people's
stomach turn.

Just a few
minutes away, Kaiser's CEO Bernard Tyson
owns a multi-million-dollar, 6,121-square foot house with a swimming pool out back.

So… what's
the clue about Kaiser's elitist corporate culture?

Apparently,
Kaiser's execs at the Pleasanton corporate park decided they could score a few laughs at the
expense of America's skyrocketing incarcerated population, 40% of whom are
people with mental illness.

The US’s
prison crisis is not typically considered a laughing matter.

The US has the largest incarcerated population
of any country in the world (one in 99 adults are living behind bars in the US).
African-Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.

But for
Kaiser's country club execs, this is apparently a laughing matter.

At their
corporate office-park utopia in aptly named Pleasanton, Kaiser decided to name the
conference rooms after America's most notorious prisons: Sing Sing, San Quentin, Angola, Attica, Leavenworth, Cook County Jail, Alcatraz, etc.

Check out the picture from Kaiser's corporate offices at 5810 Owens Drive in
Pleasanton.

A list of Kaiser's conference rooms at 5810 Owens Drive, Pleasanton

Apparently,
Kaiser's execs are enjoying endless laughs as its overpaid managers -- dressed
in three-piece suits and armed with lattes, gold watches, and iPhones -- parade
through corporate conference rooms named after the prisons housing millions of
the US's most marginalized residents.

"Can
you meet at 2:00pm to discuss next quarter’s profit targets?"

"Sure,
where are we meeting?"

"How
about Sing Sing? Or maybe you'd prefer San Quentin? In that case, ya better
give the wife a heads-up cuz I hear people usually do 25 to life in San
Quentin. Ha, ha, ha.”

There’s
nothing quite like an arrogant HMO that decides to thumb its nose at millions of
largely poor, black, brown, and mentally ill people caged inside our prisons.

Here's a humble suggestion.

Kaiser’s execs should pull their iPhones out of their asses
and read this newly published article in The Atlantic: "America's
Largest Mental Hospital Is a Jail." It begins: "At Cook County
Jail, an estimated one in three inmates has some form of mental illness. At
least 400,000 inmates currently behind bars in the United States suffer from
some type of mental illness…"

According to Tasty's sources, Regan penned the piece with Steve
Trossman (SEIU-UHW's Communications Director) and then told Trossman to
leak it to the press. Trossman approached his crew of "go-to"
reporters (those who reliably publish SEIU-UHW's materials), including Chris Rauber at the San Francisco Business Times and Tracy Seipel at the San Jose Mercury News. Rauber, of
course, wrote this
story.

Trossman: Cover-ups and Leaks

What's the significance?

Well, it's notable that Regan is now using "leaks" of internal SEIU information as a "weapon" in his
self-described "war"
against Mary Kay Henry and SEIU. This represents an escalation that’ll
inevitably sharpen tensions.

Additionally, it means we can expect that more "leaks" will follow from Regan... and that he'll deploy similar quote-and-dagger tactics against Henry.

Secondly, Tasty has learned that Mary Kay Henry was prepared
to trustee SEIU-UHW if Regan had refused to transfer UHW's 65,000 long-term
care workers. In fact, the staff of multiple California SEIU local unions were
on "24-hour-a-day standby" to receive orders from SEIU to carry
out the seizure of SEIU-UHW’s offices.

Finally, here's the latest news about SEIU Local 2015, the new statewide
union.

According to an
article in the Sacramento Bee,
Mary Kay Henry has named Laphonza Butler -- the current president of SEIU Local
6434 -- as the "provisional president" of SEIU Local 2015.

On June 22, Butler changed her Facebook profile picture to
feature one of herself standing alongside Henry.

The Bee also reports:

“Along with Butler, the new statewide local will be led by
Arnulfo De La Cruz, Kim Evon, Robert Li, and April Verrett, SEIU International
President Mary Kay Henry said Tuesday.”

Notably, each of the newly merged unions (Local 6434, Local 521, and
SEIU-UHW) will have a representative among SEIU Local 2015’s top five
staff people... except for SEIU-UHW!

Of course, this is another sign that Henry is actively marginalizing Regan and SEIU-UHW.

Butler's new FB profile picture

Here's some background on the five staffers whom Henry has
appointed to run SEIU Local 2015:

Laphonza Butler
(2014 pay of $165,952) is the president of SEIU Local 6434, serves on SEIU's
International Executive Board, is the president of the SEIU California State Council, and is a close ally of Mary Kay
Henry.

Kim Evon (2014
pay of $131,503) is currently the Secretary-Treasurer at Local 6434 and also
serves on the board of the SEIU California State Council.

Robert Li (2014
pay of $94,579) is a staff member of SEIU
Local 521, where his job title is "Director II," according to the
US Department of Labor.

April Verrett
(2014 pay of $127,931) is the Executive Vice President of “SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana-Missouri-Kansas,” a union of
64,000 workers whose name grows longer with every SEIU merger. She’s been a
member of SEIU’s International Executive Board since she was placed on Mary Kay
Henry's slate of IEB candidates in 2012. She’s also on the board of the SEIU Illinois State Council.

As far as Arnulfo de la Cruz, this appears to refer to
Arnulfo "Bobby" de la Cruz
(2014 pay of $124,223), a longtime SEIU staffer who's been on the Purple
Palace’s payroll as an "Assistant Area Director" in California. De la
Cruz’s son is also named “Arnulfo de la Cruz” and works for SEIU as the
"National Director" for immigration reform.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

A copy of the Kaiser partnership unions' "tentative
agreements" has finally slipped through the tightly clenched fists of SEIU-UHW officials.

A quick review offers some hints about why they've have
treated the TAs like a top-secret White House national security briefing.

First of all, the so-called “TAs” -- which were triumphantly
announced by both Kaiser and the partnership unions -- are not actually TAs. During labor negotiations, workers and management are supposed to negotiate
contract language for the next several-year period. That didn’t happen here. Check
out the partnership unions' TAs, which was signed by Hal Ruddick ( Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions) and Dennis Dabney (Kaiser Permanente). In small font at the bottom of each page is
the following disclosure: "Note: The parties will approve contract
language at a later time." In other words, the two sides didn't actually
negotiate contract language. Instead, the "TAs" appear to be rough
guidelines for negotiations that’ll happen at “a later date.”

So what are workers currently voting on during their unions' so-called ratification votes?

Good question.

Some of the language in the “TAs” is so half-baked that it's
difficult to know what Kaiser and union officials will possibly end up agreeing to at “a
later date.” In at least one case,
there's an actual blank spot in the TAs ("$______ per year") related to an apparent increase in the "partnership tax."

The fact that the negotiations haven't been completed raises a
bunch of questions.

Dennis Dabney with SEIU's Meg Niemi

Who will be at the negotiating table when Kaiser and the
partnership unions actually negotiate the real contract language? Will the partnership unions' bargaining team be elected? Or will it be filled with union staffers who are notoriously in management's pocket?

Will the contract language be presented to union members for a
vote?

What happens if Kaiser takes a harder line at the real negotiating
table and members have already ratified a three-year agreement?

A full copy of the so-called "tentative agreements" is
pasted below. Here are a few items that jumped out at Tasty in his quick review
of the agreement.

Pension: The TAs set in motion a process that appears
to be designed to eliminate workers' defined-benefit pension plan during the
next round of negotiations and replace it with a 401(k) plan. Here's what
the agreement says:

"The parties remain committed to working on a joint vision
and consistent strategy for retirement programs. To that end, a joint committee
will be established to review the pension benefits provided in Section
2.B.2.b., and reflected in Exhibit 2.B.2.b. The purpose of the review will be
to explore retirement income programs for the purposes of recruiting and
retaining employees, controlling costs
and liabilities, and ensuring meaningful and predictable income to KP
retirees. The joint committee will provide annual summaries of its progress, and will make consensus pension recommendations
at the next round of National Bargaining." (Emphasis added)

Partnership
Tax: It looks like the
partnership unions and Kaiser will be extracting more money from workers'
paychecks through an increase in the partnership
tax. Today, workers are taxed at 9 cents for every hour they work in order to
fund Kaiser's partnership. Here's an excerpt from the so-called TAs. Check out
the blank.

"Under the funding formula in place in
2015, by 2017 the LMP Trust Fund will take in less money than necessary to
continue to fund existing programs at their current level... In order to
sustain current operations while keeping up with annual cost increases, as well
as to implement the new and revised provisions of the 2015 National Agreement,
the LMP Trust Fund should be increased by $_______ per year."

“Changes in the Employer's overall funding
of Partnership expenses... shall be at least proportional to employee
contributions..."

Hal Ruddick: "Was I supposed to bargain contract language?"

Health
Benefit Cuts? The TAs open the door to cuts in workers' health benefits in 2017. In 2018, under Obamacare, the federal
government will begin taxing companies if companies’ health benefits exceed a
certain dollar threshold. This is what’s known as the "Cadillac tax." In the TAs, the partnership unions have "assured" Kaiser that they will
do whatever it takes "to avoid the tax." The only way to avoid the
tax is to reduce workers' health benefits by making workers
pay a substantial portion of the monthly premiums, by boosting workers’ out-of-pocket
expenses, etc. Here's the language from the TAs:

"Cadillac Tax: Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition are
committed to KP being the affordable health-care provider of choice. As part of
this commitment, Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition agree to collaborate in
assuring that KP is not subject to any PPACA excise tax. If it is determined in
May 2017 that a tax would be levied in 2018, the parties will meet and reach
consensus decisions by August 2017 to avoid the tax."

Retiree
Health Cuts: In 2012,
the partnership unions accepted cuts to workers' retiree health benefits that
gave Kaiser a $1.9
billion windfall, according to the company's published financial
statements. In the new TAs, the partnership unions have made more changes to
these benefits. However, the language in the TAs is so vague and poorly written
that it's unclear how it’ll impact workers. The language appears to place a cap
on the amount of money that Kaiser will spend per employee for retiree health
benefits. Apparently, workers will be on the hook for the rest. The TAs say:

"Coalition represented employees who
retire on or after January 1, 2017, shall be subject to the following: Fixed
amounts effective 1/1/2017 of $573 in NCAL and $279 SCAL."

In the TAs, the partnership unions allow
Kaiser to begin capturing even morebiometric data from each worker. By
2016, Kaiser will be capturing the following data from workers: smoking,
blood pressure, body weight, A1C, mammogram, pap cervical, colorectal, and
cancer.

Welcome to the brave new world of Big Brother... brought to you by Dave Regan and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions!

Local Bargaining: SEIU-UHW once
again failed to conduct any "local bargaining" on worksite issues affecting
SEIU-UHW members. Since the 2009 trusteeship, SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan has not
convened any local bargaining with Kaiser.

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